Timetable Chaos

Stepherunie

I'm pretty sure it's changed. But contact your arts programme office or Brian Doyle at brian.doyle@ucd.ie

emeraldstar

F U C K
that's not fair
If it was unfair not to inform us until so LATE in the first place, it's doubly unfair not to tell us AT ALL that it's been changed again at this stage!!
I'm gonna have to go find out...sigh
Thanks guys

Sarn

The timetabling is a nightmare, and the final year exams should take priority.

As I'm sure you've seen, exams have in excess of 2000 modules to organise in the space of a month. In the old days there were no electives (essentially) so clashes would have been few and far between. Can you imagine the logistics organising all the permutations to accommodate everybody? Glad I don't work there.

humbert

Sarn wrote:

The timetabling is a nightmare, and the final year exams should take priority.

As I'm sure you've seen, exams have in excess of 2000 modules to organise in the space of a month. In the old days there were no electives (essentially) so clashes would have been few and far between. Can you imagine the logistics organising all the permutations to accommodate everybody? Glad I don't work there.

If only there was some way they could have seen this coming and organised an adequate system to deal with it.

Steibhin

Never mind having 6 exams in 5 days. I still have 3 exams that have been scheduled twice for different days. For example Public Policy is on both the 19th and the 26th. I emailed the exams office on Tuesday asking for clarification but of course no reply.

These people are being paid money (our money) to produce a timetable. Don't not feel sorry for them.

mloc

Just had it confirmed to us at a meeting today, all 4th year exams for science will take place in the science building, probably the zoology labs. They will be organised by the science faculty and our lecturers will arrange the timetable, which we will have a confirmed copy of this evening.

@Tribulus : The lecturers are now working hard to fix up your timetables (3rd pharm/sci), talking to a few of them this morning they are pretty pissed off with the exam department and will make sure you guys get sorted out.

Again, I have to hand it to the science staff, fair play, they were up late last night organising our exams when its not really thier responsibility, taking up their own time to sort out admins cock-up. I think i can speak for my whole year when I say it's really appreciated.

humbert

mloc wrote:

Again, I have to hand it to the science staff, fair play, they were up late last night organising our exams when its not really thier responsibility, taking up their own time to sort out admins cock-up. I think i can speak for my whole year when I say it's really appreciated.

Agreed, impressive!

Stepherunie

That's class. Well done to the science lot. Living with a few final science people - I'd say they'll be a lot calmer now.

So glad my summer exams are in house too. God knows what they'd have done with us seeing as we needed a projector...

tribulus

mloc wrote:

@Tribulus : The lecturers are now working hard to fix up your timetables (3rd pharm/sci), talking to a few of them this morning they are pretty pissed off with the exam department and will make sure you guys get sorted out.

Again, I have to hand it to the science staff, fair play, they were up late last night organising our exams when its not really thier responsibility, taking up their own time to sort out admins cock-up. I think i can speak for my whole year when I say it's really appreciated.

Confirmed here too. Our lecture tomorrow is going to be used to sort out a decent timetable for people. I was kind of looking forward to being finished on the 19th but on the other hand having more time to study between exams is always welcome.

Go Conway Staff!

humbert

tribulus wrote:

Go Conway Staff!

It seems to be the whole of the science faculty, just to give credit where it's due.

tribulus

Agreed, I was just being selfish and thinking of myself

Does anyone know what the Exams Office has to say about this?
Are they bothered at all or is it just less work for them?

humbert

I'd say they're delighted.

Jonny Arson

emeraldstar wrote:

1. Your GPA will be calculated over BOTH Stages 2 and 3 on a 50/50 basis - on the 6 best module grades from Stage 2 and all module grades in Stage 3, weighted evenly. This one-off arrangement applies to students currently in Stage 2 only.

Hmm that's worded differently than the email we recieved when the change was made. Dunno where that 50/50 has come from.

Dear Student

Please note that following discussion at the BA programme board, honours
in the BA, BSocSci, BA (Computer Science) and related BA programmes will
be calculated based on the best 6 modules from Stage 2, and ALL modules
from Stage 3, with the modules equally weighted. This one-off
arrangement applies to students currently in Stage 2 ONLY.

Yours faithfully

Danielle Clarke
Bairbre Redmond

Vice-Principals
College of Arts and Celtic Studies/College of Human Sciences
University College Dublin
Dublin 4

AFAIK It hasn't changed since it was changed in November.

Simply degree is calculated on 18 modules,
Best 6 modules from 2nd year + All 12 modules from 3rd year

emeraldstar

Jonny Arson wrote:

Hmm that's worded differently than the email we recieved when the change was made. Dunno where that 50/50 has come from.

Yea that's weird, that handout's what was handed to us in a French class

woop

its kinda un believable that Im in 1st sci and my timetable is as follows
17th
19th
23rd(x2)
29th

you might say that 1st year is relatively un-important in the scheme of things, yet some people in 4th year have 10 exams in 8 days, bit silly if you ask me, oh yeh and admin decided not to schedule my physics for an exam, I only have had contact with admin 2 times, start of the year and the enrolment mess, and now with a lack of a timetabled exam, a patern seems to be emerging

dajaffa

Final timetable due on the 1st of May, granted little will change in it. Wa-hey

themole

When coming up with the timetables the first and foremost priority is avoiding clashes. Everything else comes after that.

Science doing its own timetable ehe. How will that work? Won't there be students taking science subjects as well as subjects from other faculties? How would they do the timetable to avoid clashes.

The only way i would see around that would be to not have anyother exams on at the same time.

Btw, there is nothing stopping any school doing its own exams whenever it likes, as long as they don't clash with the weeks used by the exams office.

Chakar

I got this email from the Registar.

Dear Student,
A provisional timetable for Semester 2 examinations was released to you last Monday 23rd April. A number of errors, omissions and problems have come to light, notified to us by staff and students.

We are currently working very closely with Heads of School to correct any errors in the timetable. It is our objective to publish the final, complete and accurate timetable next Tuesday evening, 1st May.

We have also had some complaints that examinations are scheduled too close together. We have been able to spread the examinations out in a small number of cases, but in most cases it is not possible, within the constraints of the timetable, to change the pattern of examinations.

All staff concerned had planned to be in a position to publish a final timetable at an earlier date. I fully understand the anxiety and frustration that has built up as a consequence of the delay and can only apologise on behalf of the University for this situation.

We have made significant improvements in the arrangements for the exams with regard to venues, allocation of seat numbers, security, refreshments and transport between exam venues. We are working closely with the President and Education Officer of the Students’ Union on these improvements. I will write to you next week, when the final timetable is published to provide further details.

Regards,

Dr Philip Nolan

Registrar and Deputy President

Vainglory

I think it's interesting that he said the words "I am sorry" in his email to all the class reps but couldn't bring himself to do so in the email to the rest of the students.

Too much to ask?

I know he's not directly responsible for the timetable but as the VP for Academic Affairs the buck's gotta stop somewhere..

This is what he said in the email we got..

"We are confident that we will have corrected errors and omissions in the timetable and aim to publish the final timetable next Tuesday evening 1st May. I understand that anxiety and frustration caused by delays and errors in the publication of the timetable: I am sorry they occurred."

tintinr35

Vainglory wrote:

I know he's not directly responsible for the timetable but as the VP for Academic Affairs the buck's gotta stop somewhere..

why does the buck have to stop anywhere??
they ballsed it up and now they have apologised......no ones life is really going to ruined because of an exam timetable,
maybe we should just, dare i say it......get over it and move on???????

Royale with Cheese

It had bloody well better be May 1st we get the proper timetable. I'm sitting 4 exams and I only know when 2 of them are.

Stepherunie

themole wrote:

Science doing its own timetable ehe. How will that work? Won't there be students taking science subjects as well as subjects from other faculties? How would they do the timetable to avoid clashes.

From what mloc was saying (and i'm open to correction) I think they are only going in house for 3rd and 4th years. But I'm not in science so not fully sure of that.

Blush_01

Sorry if this has been posted already, I have no exams so I'm not wading through the thread to see if it has.

Of course your exam timetables are going to be more condensed. They changed from a 4/5 week exam period to a fortnight. You can't expect the exams to be as spread out if you have less than half the number of days. That doesn't excuse the mess that has been made, but who dictated that the exam period would be only two weeks long (with the exclusion of Med, which runs on to the end of June, but most of that's done in hospitals, as far as I know). It wasn't the people creating the timetables, nor was it Admin. I'd look straight to the block of ice-cream they have running the joint for that particular miracle.

Harkev

Blush_01 wrote:

Sorry if this has been posted already, I have no exams so I'm not wading through the thread to see if it has.

Of course your exam timetables are going to be more condensed. They changed from a 4/5 week exam period to a fortnight. You can't expect the exams to be as spread out if you have less than half the number of days. That doesn't excuse the mess that has been made, but who dictated that the exam period would be only two weeks long (with the exclusion of Med, which runs on to the end of June, but most of that's done in hospitals, as far as I know). It wasn't the people creating the timetables, nor was it Admin. I'd look straight to the block of ice-cream they have running the joint for that particular miracle.

Not quite, the exam period is three weeks (they even tried to put some of our exams in the review week to make it 4 weeks), and because there are exams at Christmas too there should be no difference to any other year... in fact half the number of exams in less than half the time should be less condensed if anything!

FionnMatthew

tintinr35 wrote:

why does the buck have to stop anywhere??
they ballsed it up and now they have apologised......no ones life is really going to ruined because of an exam timetable,
maybe we should just, dare i say it......get over it and move on???????

I have a first average, and I would like to have the option of bringing that first average somewhere else with me. I'm good at this stuff, and I'm not going to fail anything, and I can deal with an increased stress level.

But.

10 final exams in an 8 day period is going to make it really difficult to keep that average. And these are my finals. These are the ones that matter.

I think final years should have their exams fairly timetabled. This whole thing is going to make life really difficult for me, and, despite my best efforts, probably will affect my final result.

And that does run the risk of ruining my life, in some small way. Because I'm a good student, and I deserve to get a first, and that first is important to my career - and I shouldn't have my efforts hamstrung by the very administration whose justification for existence is ME.

I can deal with problems. No situation is perfect. But why do I get the feeling that this situation is arbitrarily bad, and that without very much effort, and proper prioritisation, things could have been quite different? Because that's the situation.

No amount of apology is adequate to it. The only thing adequate to it is FIXING the ****ing mess. And the intellectual vacuum that is our university remains inert in the face of this fact.

inverted_world

Harkev wrote:

Not quite, the exam period is three weeks (they even tried to put some of our exams in the review week to make it 4 weeks), and because there are exams at Christmas too there should be no difference to any other year... in fact half the number of exams in less than half the time should be less condensed if anything!

Not for a lot of final years. I, for one, had no exams at Christmas, and now I have have all my finals crammed into three short weeks.

I'm doubting there will be many changes in my timetable apart from the two exams they managed to leave out, and I can deal with that, my timetable isn't impossible to deal with, I'm glad mine run on till the 2nd of June.

However, other people's timetables have been an absolute disgrace. Ten exams in eight days is a nightmare, and taking into account that these papers are three hours long too, I doubt I would be able to face that mentally.This gives absolutely no time to the student to rest his or her mind and "recharge their batteries", and after a few days the capacity needed to write well thought out answers will be significantly impaired, not to mention how disheartening the whole process will be.

Last year my exams went on for over a month, and while it may have seemed like they'd never end, at least I had a few days off here and there so I didn't have to worry about burning out halfway through, which is very likely to happen for a lot of people this year. I really don't see why the exam period could not have been made longer, especially for those who did not have the benifit of getting half of their courses out of the way at Christmas time. I know that other colleges have exams in the RDS too, but from what I've seen, this wouldn't make a difference, as the majority of my exams are in Blackrock, as appears to be the case for many final arts students.

Steibhin

Any sign of the final exam timetable yet??

burnedfaceman

email sent out from exams people said final timetable shall be released at seven this evening

Sinfonia

Two of my economics exams are STILL scheduled for two different times and they still haven't got the music exams.

Fcuking cnuts

Royale with Cheese

Nothing's changed as far as I can see. Both exams I was missing still aren't there.